Recently, Douyin ushered in the latest development in the Fuzhou v. Tencent unfair competition case. According to the civil ruling of the Fuzhou Intermediate Court, Douyin has withdrawn the lawsuit, and the ruling is signed on March 26.
The news reporter found from the ruling that Douyin had filed an application for withdrawal of the lawsuit to the court on March 15.
Neither Tencent nor ByteDance responded to journalists’ requests for comment.
This case refers to that in September 2019, Douyin filed an unfair competition lawsuit against Tencent-related companies in the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court.
Douyin believes that the WeChat and QQ platforms operated by Tencent restrict users from freely sharing Douyin on WeChat, WeChat Moments, QQ and Qzone through technical means. the behavior of. Other similar products, such as Weishi, Tencent Video, and Kuaishou, have not encountered Tencent’s restrictions, so this behavior constitutes unfair competition.
Douyin asked Tencent to lift restrictions, eliminate the impact and compensate 90 million yuan in damages.
Tencent filed a jurisdictional objection to this case. Tencent believes that the case is actually a contract dispute arising from the use of WeChat and QQ open platforms for “Tik Tok” short video products. Therefore, the case should be heard in the relevant court in Shenzhen, which is the jurisdiction agreed in the contract.
In December 2020, the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court ruled on the jurisdiction of Douyin v. Tencent for unfair competition, and determined that the jurisdiction of the case should be in accordance with WeChat, The QQ Developer Agreement stipulates that the court where the ownership agreement is signed. According to the subject matter of this case, the case will be transferred to Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court for trial.
Douyin did not agree with the ruling and filed an appeal with the Fujian Higher Court in February this year. According to the previous appeal of Douyin, Douyin believes that this case is an unfair competition dispute. The infringement claimed by Douyin has nothing to do with the performance of the WeChat and QQ open platform developer agreements. The jurisdiction of the Tencent developer agreement does not apply to infringement and unfairness. In a competition lawsuit, the agreement cannot be the basis for determining the jurisdiction of this case.
Now, Douyin has withdrawn the complaint.
It is worth noting that this case is not a Douyin v. Tencent monopoly case called the “first Internet platform anti-monopoly case”. On February 2, 2021, Douyin told Beijing KnowledgeThe property right court formally filed a complaint against Tencent for monopoly. Tencent also raised a jurisdictional objection for the same reason in this case.